The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mecanique Celeste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, in his single head, is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may be useful.

Eternity looks grander and kinder if time grow meaner and more hostile.

Of all the paths a man could strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path .. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest for him to do .. To find this path, and walk in it, is the one thing needful for him.

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books.

You can make even a parrot into a learned political economist - all he must learn are the two words "supply" and "demand."

If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that.

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.